Run
by Jaenelle Angelline
Summary: Alex and Olivia's pointofviews for the 5th season episode 'Loss'. FINISHED. Sequel to 'Redirect' and 'Valentine'. Read, review please! Thanks!
1. Chapter 1

Title: Run

Rating: Mature audience only, please! Language, violence

Pairing: Alex/Olivia, featuring the rest of the cast

Disclaimer: I don't own, so you don't sue. I have nothing you'd want anyway!

Notes: This is the third story in the 'Redirect' series, which starts with 'Redirect', continues with 'Valentine', and culminates with this story, 'Run'. I know, I know, the 'missing scenes' from the 5th season episode 'Loss' has been done to death, but I wanted to examine the entire episode from the point of view of the two most important characters in it. This first chapter is from Alex's point of view; the second chapter is from Olivia's. This is very heavily in-canon, but with some off-canon elements to it. Sections of dialogue were taken from the episode 'Loss', and I've put that dialogue in boldface so there won't be any doubt what belongs to Wolf Productions and what mistakes are mine. Dedicated to Stephanie March and Mariska Hargitay, who brought this episode so vividly to life. You guys are wonderful!

Oh, one other thing: According to Mariska, the necklace she wears on the show is the Sanskrit character 'Abhaya', which means 'fearlessness'. As near as I can tell, she started wearing it in the middle of the second season, and 'Loss' happened in fifth, so the timeframe of three years for the hinted-at 'relationship' between their characters is accurate, if somewhat off-canon, because nothing was ever said directly one way or another. I've seen Stephanie March wearing a gold chain with a slider bead, (see beginning of 'Loss') but since she doesn't have a personal website that I've found that I can ask about her character, I made up the stuff about her necklace. Just so you all know that was my own conjecturing, not something from the show.

Run

I never wanted to run.

I wanted to keep going with the trial. God, how I wanted to keep going. Olivia…she'll never really understand how much of an inspiration to me she is. It takes an incredible amount of personal courage and effort, after all the things she's seen and lived through, to get up every morning, cheerful and determined to face another day. A week ago, we both took time out of our busy schedules to go running; she faced the wind and launched herself through Central Park with the same whole-soul effort she puts into life, and I remember thinking that she really was the wind beneath my wings. I'd mentioned it to her a month ago, when we celebrated our third year 'together'; she laughed and scoffed, and told me that without me to give a case to, she'd have no reason to make them.

I regret what I said now. I regret all of it. When Lionel slammed me with that order to procure the confidential informant who gave Liv and Elliot the information I used to get them the search warrant, I took it and went to them. I told Liv and El that I'd stuck my neck out for them, and I wanted it back. I have to give it to them, they did try. But, of course, the DOJ blew that out of the water. I remember meeting with Donovan; he told me then that when things finally went down, blood was going to be on my hands.

I wish it had happened that way. Oh, God, how I wish things had happened that way. I knew I was going to have to pay the price for my refusal to drop the case. I just never thought that price was going to be my life, my identity…and my lover was going to have to pay it. I never wanted my blood on Olivia's hands.

I knew I could make the case that Olivia handed me stick. I had it all planned out. I was so sure of myself, I got overconfident. I got cocky. I said some things I shouldn't have, in that interview with Lionel and Zapata. Not about throwing Zapata's ass in Riker's for the duration of the trial; that's standard, and I would have done it, too. No, what I regret most was that final blow, pretty low even for me. I wish I could take those words back. "**You will also find, Mr. Zapata, that a woman can say whatever she wants to about your performance in bed, and you aren't actually allowed to kill her**." I never expected him to lunge for me; I remember jumping back from the table, my heart pounding, adrenaline flowing, wondering if I was going to have to use those self-defense courses I took all those years ago, or some of those police tactics Liv taught me during one of our many workouts at the gym. She'd learned them in a special class at the Academy, she told me, just for female officers. I could have taken him. Fortunately, it wasn't necessary. Or unfortunately.

I'm never going to forget the hole that opened up under my heart when I heard that voice on the tape recorder say my address, the one I've lived at since I started working for Arthur, and the one Liv knew as well as she knew her own. 235 West 78th. And they knew my mom lived upstate. What chilled me was when they said '**see her girlfriend'**. Liv. I wanted to scream, "Leave her out of it!" but I couldn't. Not that anyone who knew us would have complained; the news that Liv and I were closer than most ADA's and their detectives was a dead topic. Everyone knew by now, after three years of seeing us together off and on. I just didn't want the Feds to know; they were sitting right there, they might have seen the need to put a detail on her too, and we all know how she would have taken _that_. You can't protect the wind.

I needed time to think. I needed to regroup, to plan my strategy. I wanted to go home. Liv offered to take me, and thank God that she and El have such a great partnership that he just grabbed his coat and came along, because as strong as the wind is, even she can't stop a bullet. I thought, with Elliot along, no one would try anything.

Boy, was I wrong. Just another miscalculation, another mistake, in a long string of mistakes I made that have brought me here, to the seat of a plane heading away from New York, away from my life and the piece of my heart I left behind. She begged me to stay with her that night; Elliot dropped me off, and she got out and tried to talk me into coming with her to her place. Then Donovan came up—and I have to admit, I was attracted to him, in a way I hadn't been attracted to anyone since Liv. But he told me that he would be willing to testify as a last ditch effort; and then that was his last effort. My ears rang for a day afterward from the concussive force of the blast that sent his car up in flames. I felt bad for his loss, but what made me feel worse was seeing Liv, lying beside me on the pavement, her ears ringing too. What hurt me more was seeing the pain on her face when the EMT taped her hand; she'd sustained the worst injury of the two of us, the deep gash across the heel of her hand from the flying glass. I had some cuts, too, but they were superficial and the EMT didn't do anything more than dab the cuts clean. She usually discards any bandaging the day after it happens; she hates anything encumbering her limbs, her movement. A little of that 'vulnerability avoidance' issue she has. The fact that she still had it on the next day when I met the SVU in the squad room told me volumes.

It was after I saw that that I started to seriously question their involvement in the case. It wasn't personal with them; they were doing their jobs. It was personal for me, because I'd made it personal; because I'd gotten cocky, overconfident, and I'd pissed off the wrong Colombian. It was my fight, not theirs. I didn't need them to dig any deeper for me; the DA's office has their own investigators. Bless Fin, he said what they were all thinking; that they were all in, because those investigators weren't as thorough, or had as many connections, as they did. Or as much care. They all cared about me, some more than others, but Liv…Liv loved me. I knew it when she told me it wasn't necessary for me to die for the case. The look in her eyes told me just how frustrated and afraid for me she was. At the bar that night, before my life and my heart fell apart, she made a point of sitting close to me, closer than she'd sat for a long time. It reaffirmed her feelings for me, and I appreciated it.

I don't even remember the shooting. I heard the sound of a car engine as I fell into step on Elliot's left, Liv automatically taking up her familiar, old position on his right. In retrospect, if she'd thought I was still in danger, she would have put me on Elliot's right and herself on the outside…and she would have taken the bullet that was meant for me. But Arthur had just dropped the case, my detail was gone, I thought I was safe. I didn't know anything until the shot rang out, and I felt a blinding, sharp pain in my right shoulder. It didn't register immediately; I remember lying on the ground, listening to Elliot's running footsteps, and thinking _Run, Elliot. Get the plates._

Then I felt the hot stickiness, and I heard Olivia's panicked cry. My name, spoken in tones I'd never heard her use before. Panic, despair, and above everything else, fear. Fearless, that was my nickname for her, given when I gave her the necklace she always wears now and never takes off. But Fearless was afraid now, for me. I heard her scream to anyone who might be able to hear to call for an ambulance, but her voice sounded very distant and fuzzy, and the hands she pressed to my shoulder, bare hands, because she knew there was no danger of blood contaminants from me. We'd been together too long, we knew the results of each other's physicals, for God's sake. Police physicals were much more exacting and thorough than the ones I took for the DA's office, but both were pretty thorough in comparison with most people's physicals. I could hear her pleading with me, begging me to look at her, to stay with her, reassuring me I was going to be fine. It never occurred to me to doubt her. I tried to say something, but the sharp pain in my body stopped me, and I figured I'd have time later to say what I wanted to say to her.

You know, it's true that you should never put things off. If I'd fought past the pain to say what I needed to, I wouldn't be sitting here now, staring out the window of this plane and wondering what Liv is doing. The package should have arrived by now; I paid the bike messenger enough of the Feds' money to be sure that the package, and the fat envelope inside it, would be waiting for her when she got back from that horrible sham funeral she would have to attend. I was going to tell her where it was, tell her that she should get it from my apartment, but I didn't, and now I have to trust to money and a bike messenger to get it to where it's supposed to go, in my absence.

Absence. That's how I look at this. An absence. Every new beginning is some beginning's end, and this is only the start. I know someday I'll find myself back here, back in New York. Whether she'll still be there for me is another matter, but all I could do was drop a short note to Elliot. _Take care of her for me. Alex._ Seven words, scribbled on a piece of hospital printer paper, but Elliot will know from that that someday, I'll be back.

She'll know that by now, too; The bike messenger will have delivered by now, and my funeral was over fifteen minutes ago. I look at the time on my new watch; something heavy and bold, almost masculine, like the watch Olivia wears. Not like my usual feminine jewelry. Everything is new; my clothes, my hair, my name, my Social Security number, my address. There is only one thing I'm wearing now that isn't new; the narrow gold chain with the inscribed slider bead, the gift she gave me on Valentine's Day three years ago. I fought with the Feds to keep it; they insisted that everything be new, that I not have anything that could be traced back to my old life. No tax records in boxes in storage like Livia Sandoval.

I fought like hell for the necklace, just like I fought them like hell for that last glimpse of Liv in that out-of-the way corner of Central Park. I know they thought I was being a hard-ass. I know what they thought as they stood in my guarded room in the Federal hospital and coaxed, cajoled, threatened, pleaded, and begged me to reconsider, that it would be a cleaner break if no one here knew I was alive. I fought them. Refused to be moved. I refused to get on that plane until Agent Hammond came in yesterday, the first day of October, and told me that he'd sent a note to Cragen asking for a meeting between Liv, Elliot, and me in Central Park late that night under cover of darkness. I thanked him and chased him out, because I needed to think. To plan.

That meeting wasn't going to be long enough for me to say everything I wanted to say to her; it was more for my peace of mind, because I don't want, I can't have, my last memory of Olivia be the frantic woman I saw in the hospital. The doctors took me into surgery, into the OR, and got me patched up pretty quickly; the wound nicked an artery, but Olivia's hands on the wound stopped the blood flow just enough that the time it took for the ambulance to get to me wasn't fatal. The Feds showed up in the back of the hospital with an ambulance from a federal hospital, and they wheeled me out on a gurney, my face mostly hidden by an oxygen mask, strapped down.

Because I would have tried to get back to her, no matter how I was feeling, when I saw the doctor come out of a door down the hall and tell Olivia I was dead, and saw her scream my name in denial and pain. She ran at the window providing a view into the OR; she saw them pull the sheet over the mannequin that was made to look like me, and she threw herself at that window, screaming, crying 'no, no, no,' over and over again. She hadn't even cleaned up; her hands were still coated with my blood, drying now but still wet enough to leave streaks on the glass. She beat her fists against the window, not caring what she did, what damage she might cause in her frenzy; the last image I had of her was of Elliot grabbing her, pulling her back to her chair, and she collapsed beside him, crying, sobbing into his shoulder as he hugged her, and I knew from the set of his shoulders that he was crying too. At that moment, Feds and protection be damned, agreement be damned, I would have gone back to tell them I really was all right if I hadn't been strapped down. As it was, all I could do was lie there and watch the recessed lighting in the hospital ceiling go by, and wonder how I was going to make it all right. I was supposed to pay the price for my bull-headed stubbornness. Not Liv.

And so after I chased Hammond and the other agents out, I didn't rest. I sat thinking for about an hour, then grabbed some of the paper they'd left for me, something to write a note on if I thought of any other loose end from my life I needed to clean up. I wrote Olivia a long letter; then I went to the meager box of personal items they had gotten from my apartment, the things I asked them to get but that they'd tried to make me promise to leave behind. They were still there, the packages I'd bought the day before Liv and El got the Sandoval case.

I opened the boxes, unwrapped the foam, put them on the hospital bed side by side. I'm not a one for dolphins; I've heard of them attacking people, but Liv had a thing for them, and when I saw this pair I knew they were perfect. They were supposed to be a matched set of paperweights, the wave-shaped bases notched to fit together. When you put them together, you almost couldn't see where they came apart; they were that well-made. And because they were so well-made, there was no flaw in their tail fins.

I only had two plates left in the Polaroid camera. I had to make both of them count. I set the timer carefully and, with tears in my eyes overflowing down my cheeks, I picked up the matched set of crystal dolphins and held them close to my face as the shutter clicked. I tried to smile through the tears; it wouldn't matter to Liv, but I had to try because I didn't want this last photo of Alexandra Cabot to be of me crying my eyes out. Then I put the dolphin I was going to keep down, set Olivia's dolphin separate, and took a picture of that. I wanted to have the picture of that one to take with me; but Olivia would have the picture of me, holding both, caught together eternally by the click of a button and the flash of a bulb. It was all I could do. I repacked both dolphins in their boxes, slipping the letter I'd written to Olivia into her box, then securely taped it back together with packing tape from the box (I'd planned for that too, and the feds were so anxious to keep me safe they gave me anything I said I wanted, no questions asked—except what I wanted most; my life, my identity, my lover—back.)

I didn't have to fight to keep the dolphin. They thought I was going to fight to keep the collection of crystal unicorns in the curio cabinet in my apartment, and though I _am_ going to miss them, mostly for sentimental reasons, the only one I really wanted was the dolphin. Everyone knew I didn't like dolphins; so they thought that was 'safe'. And as the car drove away from Liv and Elliot in the park, I clutched the dolphin, prayed she'd get its mate, prayed she'd understand. I saw the emptiness, the raw agony, in her eyes as I stepped out of the car; I couldn't speak, couldn't say anything, because the lump in my throat made talk impossible. I know I mumbled something to a shocked, stunned Elliot about being sorry that I'd dragged them both into this, but when I looked at Liv, the words wouldn't come and all I could do was cry. Her gold shield had a strip of black across it; an honor reserved for cops. She'd flaunted tradition by wearing it for me, and obviously no one stopped her. "How long?" I think she asked me, but I couldn't answer that, and she knew it. When I lowered myself back into the car, slowly, painfully, because my shoulder was still killing me and turned back to look at her, her eyes were no longer empty. She no longer had that empty, hollow, half-a-person look in her eyes, and that gave me the courage to simply nod to her as the door closed. I didn't look out the rear window.

The plane might be flying, but I'm running. Running scared, because, despite the lessons in fearlessness I've learned from Olivia, I'm not her. I'm not fearless. My fear isn't for myself, not entirely; it's for her. She does so much good in this world; she puts aside her own inward fear and becomes fearless for her victims. I need to leave her so she can continue to do that. I love my job, but it's not my life. Her job _is_ her life. I would be no kind of lover or friend if something I did took that away from her.

I'll be back someday. But for now, I'll run.


	2. Run 2

Title: Run

Rating: Mature audience only, please! Language, violence

Pairing: Alex/Olivia, featuring the rest of the cast

Disclaimer: I don't own, so you don't sue. I have nothing you'd want anyway!

Notes: I know, I know, the 'missing scenes' from the 5th season episode 'Loss' has been done to death, but I wanted to examine the entire episode from the point of view of the two most important characters in it. This chapter is from Olivia's point of view. This is very heavily in-canon, but with some off-canon elements to it. Sections of dialogue were taken from the episode 'Loss', and are typed in boldface print, so there won't be any doubt which words are mine and which aren't. Dedicated to Stephanie March and Mariska Hargitay, who brought this episode so vividly to life.

Run

I wanted to run.

I stood there next to that gravesite, watching the coffin being lowered into the ground; the coffin that only Elliot and I and her mother knew was empty. The tears I cried, however, weren't for her; they were, selfishly, for me. Before this case, I was happy, secure. I'd found myself, with Alex's help; I was whole again, no longer a fragile, flawed crystal dolphin. And then, in one instant, with one bullet, all of that was shattered, broken. Gone.

I wasn't sure I knew how to be me. Alex had been a part of my life for so long, both at work and out of it. We'd laughed together, cried together, fought together, lived together, loved together. I was half of something infinitely precious, and for a moment there, I'd thought it was gone.

I don't even remember what I'd done. I don't remember the rest of that terrible night five days ago. It comes back to me in moments of sharp clarity between moments of fuzziness, like little mental snapshots. Several stand out clearly; crawling across the pavement to Alex's side, barely able to take my eyes off her for a moment to catch the attention of a passerby and tell them to call an ambulance. I remember calling her name, crying her name desperately, telling her to stay with me, that she was going to be fine. I remember Elliot grabbing my arms and pulling me back, away from her body as the EMT techs swarmed over her, and then everything goes fuzzy.

My next clear mental snapshot is of standing up from those hard plastic chairs at the hospital. The doctor just came out, and his face is so grim I know what he's going to say before he says it; but there's till a stubborn, irrational part of me that's hoping I'm wrong. I hope that he's going to say she's going to be all right, but then he says gently, carefully, "I'm sorry, Detectives. The bullet hit a major artery in her shoulder, and she lost too much blood. The ambulance didn't get to her fast enough." I stared down at my hands; they're still coated with blood, Alex's blood, from where I pressed down on her shoulder to stop the flow, at least a little. And then I turn my head, almost in slow motion, and I see the surgeons through the window pulling the sheet up over her face. And I lose it.

That much I know. I lost it, there. I threw myself at the window, screaming Alex's name in a fury of anguished grief and hollow loss, and I pound my fists against it, ignoring the bloody streaks my hands are leaving on the glass, hoping that the sheer amount of noise I make will wake her up, and she'll sit up on the table and push the sheet off, and smile and say she's going to be all right. But she won't, and the monitors are all flatlined. She was all I had, and she was gone now.

Elliot wraps his arms around my waist and hauls me bodily back from the window, and drags me forcibly back into the damn plastic chair. I want to pick it up, to hurl it at him; how could he keep me from her? I want to throw it at the window, at the doctor who stands there with concern in his eyes but empty hands. I want to run into that OR, want to go in there and wake Alex up and take her home. I want Alex. And I couldn't have her, ever again. I collapsed into the chair Elliot put me in, and he wrapped his arms around me, one of his hands pressed to the back of my head, gently but insistently until I give into the pressure and lay my face into his jacket, crying and crying as if I'll never stop. He knew how close we were; but I don't think even he knows just what she gave me that no one else ever gave me, what it was about her that kept me coming back. She loved me, unconditionally, unreservedly; even when I left her for a fling with a man, she was always there for me, smiling, willing to take me back, hug me and hold me when the man broke my heart and I had only her to turn to again.

When I had no more tears left I looked up again, and the OR was empty. The doctor had gone. And suddenly all I wanted to do was go, too. I pushed Elliot away and ran. Ran down the hall, out of the hospital, out into the streets. I had heard the voice on the tape say '**you should see her girlfriend'**, and I remember seeing Alex's look of shock, that someone we'd never even met knew about us. I remember hoping that Zapata would find me, would be watching the hospital for me and see me coming out and shoot me, right then and there, and then I could go and be with her.

I should have known I wouldn't be that lucky. I can't be that lucky. Look at me, look at who I am. Luck is not a word that can be attached to me or my life in any one given sentence. I was born unlucky. If I'd been lucky, I wouldn't have been conceived when my mother's rapist came inside her. If I'd been lucky, I wouldn't have had to deal with all the shit I had to deal with growing up. If I'd been lucky, my mother wouldn't have drank; she wouldn't have abused and neglected and degraded me every time her blood alcohol level rose. If I'd been lucky I would have left. If I'd been lucky I would have become the teacher I always dreamed I'd be when I was younger. If I'd been lucky, I would have been behind Elliot on his left, closest to the street. If I'd been lucky I would have taken the bullet for Alex, and she would still be free to live her life.

If I'd been lucky Zapata's hitmen would have dropped me there on the pavement outside the hospital.

I'm not that lucky.

I ran. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't care. I ran blindly, letting my feet decide where they would take me, and it wasn't until they finally stopped that I realized I'd run from the hospital to my home. I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to go into the apartment and see Alex's jacket sitting there over the arm of the couch, the jacket she'd left and I'd promised to bring to work that day and forgotten in my hurry. I was about to run again, despite the stitch in my side, despite the fact that I was exhausted, mentally and emotionally, when a hand caught me.

Elliot had known where I would go, or he followed me. God, I'm lucky I have a partner like him. He caught my arm, preventing me from taking off again, and guided me to his car. I followed him blindly, stumbling in weariness, and he stuffed my body into the front passenger seat of his car and buckled my seatbelt for me. I don't remember the trip; I don't think I said anything. He was silent, too, God only knows what he thought. Everything is fuzzy; I don't remember climbing the steps to the precinct, I don't remember him opening the door to the Crib, I don't remember him tucking the blanket up around me like I was one of his daughters. I slept; I was more exhausted than I realize.

My next clear memory is waking up in the Crib, going from deep sleep to instant wakefulness. There was no fogginess around the memory now. Sometimes, the morning after something terrible happens, you wake up, and things seem normal until you remember that _something bad happened last night, something terrible and catastrophic and my life will never be the same,_ and then it hits you like a ton of bricks and you want to drift back into that blessedly oblivious sleep.

I got up and opened the door, and t the sound every head and eye in the squad room turned toward me. Most of them were sympathetic; they understood I'd lost someone close. Fin's eyes were a little red; I wondered if he's been crying. John looked like he'd aged about ten years overnight; Elliot looked haggard, and I wondered distantly f he'd even slept at all. Cragen's eyes, when he looked at me, were full of understanding. He knew what I was feeling; I didn't have to tell him. He'd sort of adopted me as his 'daughter' when I joined the unit; at first tentatively, then wholeheartedly when he found out I didn't have a father. I told him things I didn't dare tell my 'big brother' Elliot; things I couldn't tell Fin or John, I told him.

My sex life wasn't any of his business, but I knew he worried so I kept him apprised, delicately. It started when I'd unburdened myself to him after the day Alex saw my scars; I needed to know if the understanding, compassion and acceptance I found in Alex was common to only women, to her specifically, or if eventually a man would accept those scars too. He'd flinched when I told him about Christopher, in high school; and he'd assured me that most weren't like that. It felt good, coming from a man who was old enough to be objective about things like this, but who cared enough about me to tell me the truth about what he thought and felt. I'd hugged him for it, and he'd looked at me like I'd given him a priceless gift. Don was the father I didn't have; I don't think Elliot even knows how many times he's given me rides home, how many times he's picked me up when I needed it, or knocked me on my ass when I needed that too. Alex knew, but she didn't tell. Only Alex.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and went wordlessly into his office when he gestured…and then I cried on his shoulder for an hour. I was completely dry when I went out, went to my locker, and took out the little black band that fit across my shield. I fit it over the gold, under the lower half of the circle but over my badge number, and clipped it to the lapel of my jacket, crumpled after sleeping in it. It was a blatant defiance of tradition; traditionally it was only supposed to be worn for cops, by cops. I felt every eye in the squad room on me when I turned around, the mourning band plain in front of me, but I didn't care. IAB was going to have fits about my wearing it for an ADA; at the moment, I couldn't care less.

And then, Elliot, bless his heart, deliberately took his badge off, took his own little mourning band out of his desk drawer, and fitted it over his shield. And he clipped it to his shirt pocket, right where I'd put mine. Fin and John followed suit….and suddenly every officer in the squad room was wearing that black band too. Don must have noticed the absence of sound in his squad room; he stuck his head out of his office, saw me with the band across my shield. Saw Elliot, watching him with his own band, and he retreated into his office and closed the door. When he came back out, he too, wore the band. If IAB was going to have fits about this, they were going to have to nail every cop in the room, starting with Don and working their way down.

And by the end of that day, every cop in the One-Six wore that band.

I refused his offer of a ride home that night; instead, I ran home, the whole way, tears burning in my eyes and my chest. And when I finally got in, breathless, the sight of Alex's jacket over my couch, undisturbed after two days, almost sent me back out. Something made me reach for it, grab it, and then I was lying on my couch, curled around that jacket, sobbing my heartbreak because I'd lost her. She called me the wind beneath her wings, once; I told her she was the wind beneath mine. If she didn't do something with the cases I handed her, I wouldn't make them, and my reason for living would be gone. She was the wind; not me. She was the one who gave me the courage, every day, to get up and face the world again. She was so happy, so bold and brave and defiant, and I had to get up and go to work every day to keep that spirit alive in someone else, a silent homage to the woman I loved.

I knew then just how much I was going to miss waking up next to her, how much I was going to miss seeing her long blond strands caught in my hairbrush because she forgot to bring hers. How much I was going to miss seeing her come out of the shower, dripping wet and so damn sexy I'd take the towel off and we'd make love right there. How I'd miss her hogging all the hot water for her morning shower. How I'd miss smelling her shampoo on my pillow, her body soap on my sheets. How I'd miss coming home late at night to find her in bed already but dinner waiting in the microwave with those annoyingly endearing 'Eat before you sleep, Fearless!' Post-Its stuck to my microwave door.

I'd miss being able to surprise her at her apartment, if I happened to be off or got out early; miss lighting candles and running a hot bath, and meeting her naked at her door with a glass of light wine and a kiss; I'd miss running my hand over her long limbs, her lean body; miss our workouts, how I had to piss her off before she'd attack me, and then once she got really worked up she'd put me on my back on the mat. I'd miss leaving her the odd note in her briefcase or the bag of her favorite chocolates with 'Just because, Sis. Love, Fearless' Post-Its stuck to the side of the plastic. I'd miss _her_.

The mood persisted. I felt like I didn't have anything to live for anymore. I'd been 'Alex and Liv' for so long, almost three years, that I didn't know how to be just 'Liv' anymore. Captain Cragen didn't push me back out; for once, I welcomed the quiet time at my desk, and he let me take my time. He didn't bat an eyelash when the three days of mourning were up and everyone took their bands off their shields except me. When IAB came to hassle me about my still wearing it, Cragen sent them off with their tails tucked between their legs. He didn't tell me what they'd said, and I was grateful, because I didn't want to know.

I didn't know what I was expecting when a uniform brought the Post-it from Agent Hammond requesting Elliot's and my presence in Central Park that evening. For one wild moment I almost told Elliot I wasn't going. I didn't want to see the man who'd put his investigation ahead of ours, and cost Alex her life, but I couldn't do that to him. As much as I was hurting over Alex's death, he had to have been hurting too, not only because he missed her but also because he could see my obvious pain too. I couldn't run form this, as much as I wished I could. I didn't understand what Hammond meant when he said, "**This one's** **being a real hard ass, wouldn't take no for an answer**." I didn't understand when he opened the door of the car. But it all became a moot point when _she_ stepped out, carefully, because her arm was in a sling and she looked like she was in a lot of pain, but it was unmistakably her.

She looked at Elliot first, saying something about being sorry, and I only vaguely listened because my eyes were filled with the sight of her, whole and alive. She was going into witness protection, and she didn't know for how long. She didn't know how long it would take to get Velez dealt with. I just stood there, tears running down my face, as the pieces of my heart pulled themselves together. Witnesses going into witness protection weren't supposed to have any contact with the people they left behind; it was an incredible testimony to how stubborn Alex was, how persistent, and it also drove home to me how much she must have loved me, because she wasn't here meeting her mother; she was here meeting us. And then she turned her head toward mine, and tears filled her eyes, and I knew she wasn't even here for Elliot. She was here for me. Her eyes said she knew about my panic in the hospital, and she couldn't leave me like that. And her eyes said she was going to miss me as much as I was going to miss her.

They hurried her back in the car, and she didn't look back as they drove her away to whatever new life they'd cobbled up for her. Or if she did, I didn't see it through tinted windows at midnight. Elliot turned to me, asking me something, but I shrugged his hand off, shrugged off his concern, and I ran. Again. From the ass-end of Central Park back to my own apartment, and the memories I had of Alex.

And now Elliot's turning to me, asking me again if he can take me home. It's raining, a cold drizzle, and October rain in New York is _cold_. I'm wearing black; skirt, heels, shirt, sweater, jacket, and my badge, again, is prominently displayed in front of my lapel with the black band around it. Don told me to wear it as long as I felt I needed to, and screw IAB; somehow, it just hasn't felt right taking it off even though I know she's alive. I shrug off Elliot's hand and walk away. Ignoring Elliot's and Fin's and John's and Don's gazes drilling holes in my back, between my shoulder blades, I keep to the steady walk until I round the corner, the bend in the cemetery path, and then I break into a jog. It's killing my feet, running in three-inch heels, but I don't care. I have to run. I wish I could have run after her, run with her, gone with her wherever she went, so she wouldn't have to be so alone. No. So _I_ wouldn't have to be so alone.

I arrive back at my apartment, soaked through by the rain, breathless, chilled to the bone. Don wanted us back at the station, but he told me to go ahead and change before I came back. I know I have to get back, but there's a package waiting for me, a little box set neatly beside my apartment door, and as I pick it up any questions as to who it's from vanish when I see Alex's handwriting on the label.

Screw work. I drop my things on the couch, put the box on the coffee table, and open it. It's so well wrapped that I can't figure out what it is at first, but as my shaking hands peel away layers of foam and plastic the shape becomes clearer until finally I'm holding a magnificent six-inch tall crystal dolphin, in full lead crystal by its weight, and nestled among the crystal waves at its base is a Polaroid of Alex, smiling, holding the dolphin I'm holding now and one identical to it together. At the bottom she's scrawled, _Take care of him for me, Fearless. Love, Sis._

My eyes start to blur with tears, and I blink rapidly in an effort to dispel them. That's when I notice the packet of folded paper tucked in the side of the dolphin's box. I put him down carefully and reach for it, pulling it out carefully and unfolding it. It's Alex's handwriting, and just seeing it makes my eyes tear up again. I blink them away and focus on the words.

_Dear Liv:_

_I'm so sorry, Olivia. I wish it wasn't this way. I wish I hadn't said the things I said to Zapata; I wish I could rewind all of this and do things different, and make it all okay again. But I can't. I can only beg for your forgiveness, for leaving you alone, for being the coward and running. I'm not you, Olivia. I'm not fearless. I'm afraid for my life, I'm afraid for yours. If they can't get me they'll try to get you, or my mother, or anyone else in the unit. I could deal with anyone else…but you. You're the one precious thing in my life I can't give up, the one person I'm so afraid for. I can't put your life in danger. So I'm going._

They patched me up at the hospital pretty quickly. The pressure you put on the wound stopped the blood flow from the torn artery, and while I'm going to have to take it easy for a while, I won't suffer any lasting effects. All that's going to be left is a scar on my skin and a scar on my heart. And on yours. Olivia, I'm sorry about that too; I know I promised you a long time ago that I wouldn't hurt you, and now I'm hurting you in the worst way of all. And I can't do a damn thing about it. I saw you at the hospital. I saw you throw yourself at the window, crying, screaming for me, and if I'd been ambulatory and unsedated I would have run back, and the Feds would have had to go to hell. But I wasn't, I was barely conscious, and they hurried me away. All I could do was refuse to leave the VA hospital they stashed me in until they agreed to let me see you one last time. I didn't want your last image of me to be of me lying on that sidewalk with my blood on your hands, in shock.

The writing is blurred here, as if Alex has dropped a tear on the page.

So I'm sending you this photo, even though, by the time you get this, there will be another image of me in your mind. But as of last night, when I left the hospital and they handed me the paperwork with my new identity on it, I'm no longer Alexandra Cabot; I'm Emily-something-or-other, with a new haircut, new clothes, new everything. Except two things. I fought them like hell to keep the necklace you gave me with the 'sister' slider bead and the mate to the dolphin in your hand. They were two halves of a whole, and I know the photo is really bad but you can see they were meant to fit together. Like we are. Apart, they're separate but equally beautiful works of art; together, they form an indescribably beautiful whole. This is my last photo as Alexandra Cabot. Keep it. Keep the dolphin. Remember me. And I'll be back someday. I'll help them do whatever it is they want to do, need to do, to get Velez extradited or otherwise 'dealt with'. And when that day comes, there won't be any more reason to run, except back home to you. And we'll be Fearless and Sister, together again.

_I love you, Olivia._

_Alexandra._

I can hardly breathe through the lump in my throat. Tears streamed down my cheeks, but for the first time since the shots rang out, I'm at peace. The tears are gentle, healing grief, not the angry anguish of the last few days. For the first time, as I put the letter down and look at Alex's jacket, still lying on the sofa, I don't feel the urge to throw something, I don't want to scream or be angry. I believe Alex. I trust Alex. I don't know when, but my soulmate will, eventually, one day, come home. All I have to do is wait.

I fold the letter carefully and head for my bedroom, carrying the dolphin and the letter. In a box in the back of my bottom drawer, are all my important papers; little bits of my life that I want to keep, treasure, never let go. I lay Alex's letter in the box, carefully smoothing the edges down, then replaced the box and go to my bedside table. It's a matter of a few moments to replace my old dolphin, the one with the flawed tail fin, the one I call my 'pre-Alex' self, with the new one. It catches the first ray of weak, watery sunlight coming from my window and fractures the light into a thousand dancing rainbows on my bedroom walls. I arrange it so that it can get the benefit of the best sunlight available from the window and sit there for a moment, looking at a snip of rainbow lying across my pillow. Rainbows are supposed to mean hope, I think, from the Bible. I'll have to ask Elliot later this afternoon as we head out to interview the next witness on our list for the new case we got yesterday, the case Don's been too polite to push me out to work on.

I go to my closet, take out my black slacks and black polo shirt. The shirt's not completely black; there are sparkly threads woven into the knit that throw back a subtle point of light. It's too soon to stop wearing black, but my grief is no longer so all-encompassing. I pick a pair of black running sneakers out of my closet. No one's going to notice them under the black slacks, and a run from my apartment to the One Six will be the thing to clear the last dregs of grief from my mind.

There's light at the end of the tunnel, a light named Alex. Every stride I take will bring me closer to her. For her, I'll run.

Notes:

I'm breaking with my personal tradition here and putting a set of notes at the end of this chapter. I think it's done, but I'm tossing around the idea of one more chapter, describing Elliot's point of view as he watches his partner/best friend go through all of this. If this is something you all would like to read, please let me know! Thank you!


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